From: Gregory Brown Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2017 1:07 PM To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 05/21/2017 DEAR FRIEND </a <=p> Consider This </=pan> Trying to come to terms with=President Trump's proposal to increase the US military budget by an additional $54 billion I ran across a 2015 article in ProPublica — We Blew $17 Billion in Afghanistan. How Would You Have Spent It? —=/b> And boy did it blow my mind. It is estimated that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will eventually cost American taxpaye=s $4 to $6 trillion, if not more. The truth is that everything we spent in these unnecessary wars is a waste but =he $17 billion that fell through the cracks is unconscionable, especially when=the President wants to cut programs for the poor, children and elderly to give =he military an additional $54 billion. The U.S. government has wasted b=llions of dollars in Afghanistan, but until ProPublica in 2015, no one has added it all up.40=A0 Project after project blundered ahead ignoring history, culture and warnings of failure. And Congress has barely bli=ked as the financial toll has mounted. Here's just what the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found.Q=A0 ProPublica listed all of the US programs in Afghanistan and their waste and across the page government programs where the money wou=d have been better spent. See for yourself how that money could have been use= at home as well as the actual ProPublica article in its entirety via the web t=nk below. Web Link: Behold, American taxpayer, what happened to nearly a half billion of your dollars i= Afghanistan: EFTA_R1_01366530 EFTA02367909